Many investors believe investment success comes from picking the right stock, timing the market, or finding the star fund manager. The reality? Even professionals fail to consistently outperform, especially once costs and taxes are considered. Emotional decisions, such as chasing trends in euphoria or selling in fear, can do even more damage.
The real-world gap between investors' actual returns compared to market returns, called the behavior gap, has been estimated at 1% to as high as 5%.
We believe there’s a better way. Decades of evidence-based research provide a clear strategy: a disciplined, diversified, cost- and tax-efficient approach gives investors the highest probability of long-term success.
Here are 11 questions and the principles that guide how we invest:
- Because investments are not an end in themselves but are tools to fund your life.
- Every portfolio we build is tied directly to your goals, values, and aspirations, ensuring your money serves what matters most to you.
- Yes. While short-term swings are unpredictable, history shows that markets have rewarded patient and disciplined investors with long-term growth.
- Staying invested through the ups and downs is how wealth is built.
- Behavioral finance shows that emotions are the enemy of good investing. Many investors buy high out of excitement and greed and sell low out of fear and panic.
- We help clients stay disciplined so emotions don’t derail long-term success.
- They go hand in hand. Research confirms higher returns require taking on more risk.
Our job is to help you take the right kinds of risk and avoid unnecessary risks while keeping your portfolio aligned with your comfort level.
- The most reliable way to manage uncertainty is diversification.
- By spreading investments across thousands of securities, asset classes, and geographies, we reduce the impact of any one holding and create a smoother path to long-term returns.
- Studies show that your mix of stocks, bonds, and other assets is the single biggest driver of long-term performance, much more than individual security selection.
- We design your allocation around your goals, time horizon, and tolerance for risk.
- Through rebalancing. As markets move, portfolios drift away from their target asset allocation.
- We rebalance systematically by selling what’s grown beyond its intended weight and buying what’s lagged to control risk and reinforce a “buy low/sell high” discipline.
- Inflation erodes the purchasing power of money over time.
- We include investments designed to grow in real terms, such as equities, inflation-protected bonds, and select real assets, so your portfolio maintains value in the long run.
- Every dollar spent on fees, trading costs, or complexity is a dollar that can’t grow for you.
- That’s why we focus on low-cost, efficient investments that let compounding work in your favor.
- Taxes can quietly eat away at returns if unmanaged, so we look at what you actually keep.
- We use strategies like tax-loss harvesting, asset location, and careful rebalancing to make sure you keep more of what you earn.
- Markets are always evolving and new trends come and go, but the core principles of diversification, discipline, and cost control endure.
- We adapt to new research and tools, but the foundation of our investment philosophy remains timeless.